Adam Coate's blog

We bring to the consideration of our readers this incisive and carefully formulated analysis by Canada’s renowned philosopher Professor John McMurtry.

I was sceptical of the 9-11 event from the first time I saw it on television. It was on every major network within minutes. All the guilty partieswere declared before any evidence was shown.The first questions of any criminal investigation were erased. Who had the most compelling motives for the event? Who had the means to turn two central iconic buildings in New York into a pile of steel and a cloud of dust in seconds?[i]

Other questions soon arose in the aftermath. Why was all the evidence at the crime scenes removed or confiscated?

Who was behind the continuous false information and non-stop repetition of “foreign/Arab terrorists”when no proof of guilt existed? Who was blocking all independent inquiry?

Even 11 years on these questions are still not answered.

But those immediately named guilty without any forensic proof certainly fitted the need for a plausible Enemy now that the “threat of the Soviet Union” and “communist world rule” were dead. How else could the billion-dollar-a-day military be justified with no peace dividend amidst a corporately hollowed-out U.S. economy entering its long-term slide? While all the media and most of the people asserted the official 9-11 conspiracy theory as given fact, not all did.

"The leaseholder of the World Trade Center properties is asking a U.S. federal judge to reject arguments that American Airlines is not liable for damages stemming from the September 11, 2001 hijackings because the attacks were an act of war.

Larry Silverstein filed court papers Wednesday asking U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in Manhattan to dismiss that line of defense by the airline and its parent, AMR Corp, in the developer's long-running negligence lawsuit against them.

Silverstein has sought to hold American and United Airlines, now United Continental Holdings Inc, responsible for damages from the 2001 attacks for allegedly failing to provide adequate airport and airline security".

"I had the feeling that there was one final thing left for me to do regarding my research of informed trading activities in connection to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 in order to close that chapter of my journalistic work once and for all. And so I went back to the 9/11 stories involving Deutsche Bank Alex Brown. I considered it a journalistic obligation to exercise diligence.

With regard to the research that I’ve done on the topic of “9/11 Insider Trading” there was one thing that I hadn’t gone after sufficiently enough: so far I had not asked the German Bank for a statement on two particular issues. I also noticed that no one else had asked the Deutsche Bank for it – at least I could not find anything that suggested otherwise.

What those two issues were should become evident if I just cite some various e-mails. Moreover, they will give you all relevant links/sources to follow up on the whole story if you want to. I am aware that the format is a bit unusual and a bit hard to follow, but I am confident that you will understand it in the end".

"Some of the world’s leading social critics and political critics have used pen names. As Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge points out (edited slightly for readability):

Though often maligned (typically by those frustrated by an inability to engage in ad hominem attacks), anonymous speech has a long and storied history in the United States. Used by the likes of Mark Twain (aka Samuel Langhorne Clemens) to criticize common ignorance, and perhaps most famously by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay (aka publius) to write the Federalist Papers, we think ourselves in good company in using one or another nom de plume.

Particularly in light of an emerging trend against vocalizing public dissent in the United States, we believe in the critical importance of anonymity and its role in dissident speech.

Like the Economist magazine, we also believe that keeping authorship anonymous moves the focus of discussion to the content of speech and away from the speaker – as it should be. We believe not only that you should be comfortable with anonymous speech in such an environment, but that you should be suspicious of any speech that isn’t".

"CIA nominee John Brennan was repeatedly questioned about torture at his CIA confirmation hearing, including the use of waterboarding and enhanced interrogation techniques. He refused to say waterboarding was a form of torture, but said he has come to oppose the technique. Under George W. Bush, Brennan served as deputy executive director of the CIA and director of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center. "Remember, he was the cheerleader for some of these onerous policies, particularly renditions and extraordinary renditions. So, for John Brennan today to say he read the Senate committee intelligence report on torture and he learned things he never knew before and that he was shocked with what he learned, this is a case of incredible willful ignorance," says Melvin Goodman, former CIA and State Department analyst. [includes rush transcript]"

"GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- Someone else besides the judge and security officer sitting inside the maximum-security court here can impose censorship on what the public can see and hear at the Sept. 11 trial, it was disclosed Monday

The role of an outside censor became clear when the audio turned to white noise during a discussion of a motion about the CIA’s black sites.

Confusion ensued. A military escort advised reporters that the episode was a glitch, a technical error. A few minutes later, the public was once again allowed to listen into the proceedings and Army Col. James Pohl, the judge, made clear that neither he nor his security officer was responsible for the censorship episode.

“If some external body is turning the commission off based on their own views of what things ought to be, with no reasonable explanation,” the judge announced, “then we are going to have a little meeting about who turns that light on or off.”"

"Fifteen city workers who suffered health problems from working at Ground Zero will be the first to get payouts from a $2.8 billion 9/11 fund created by Congress two years ago.

The biggest award is $1.5 million, to a 43-year-old firefighter who had to stop working because of respiratory problems, officials of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund said yesterday.

The minimum awards are $10,000. All are for respiratory ailments, said Sheila Birnbaum, the lawyer overseeing the fund.

Fourteen of the payees are firefighters and one worked for the city Department of Correction.

Individuals offered payouts are getting only 10 percent up front. Whether they eventually get the full amount that Birnbaum has deemed appropriate will depend on how many people file claims and whether Congress funds the entire cumulative payout".

"Former CIA agent John Kiriakou speaks out just days after he was sentenced to 30 months in prison, becoming the first CIA official to face jail time for any reason relating to the U.S. torture program. Under a plea deal, Kiriakou admitted to a single count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by revealing the identity of a covert officer to a freelance reporter, who did not publish it. Supporters say Kiriakou is being unfairly targeted for having been the first CIA official to publicly confirm and detail the Bush administration’s use of waterboarding. Kiriakou joins us to discuss his story from Washington, D.C., along with his attorney, Jesselyn Radack, director of National Security & Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project. "This ... was not a case about leaking; this was a case about torture. And I believe I’m going to prison because I blew the whistle on torture," Kiriakou says. "My oath was to the Constitution. … And to me, torture is unconstitutional."".